In Babylon did Bush the man
A stately regime change decree:
Where Tigris' bloody treasure ran
From brutal shock and awe Sadam
     Unto the oily sea.
So twice Mesopotamian ground
With tanks and war-planes was girdled round:
And Baghdad gardens bright with palace kill,
Where blossomed many an incense tortured tree,
And here were cities ancient as the hills,
Enfolding target spot artillery.

But oh! that propaganda gulf which slanted
Down the green zone athwart insurgent cover!
A savage place! as deadly and enchanted
As e'er beneath a roadside bomb was haunted
By jihadi wailing for his djinni-lover!
And from that gulf, with ceaseless convoy seething,
As if this earth in desert pants were breathing,
A mighty army momently was forced,
Amid whose chemical half-rubber suits
Huge tanks and bradleys rushed rebounding hail,
Or chaffed the grain beneath militia's flail:
And 'gainst Republican guard at once and ever
It conquered momently the sacred river.
Five hundred miles driven by direct action
Through palm and dune the sacred river ran
To reach the brutal shock and awe Sadam
And grasp his airport for rebellious nation:
Then 'mid this triumph Bush 2 heard from far
Ancestral voices prophesying war!
     Mission dome accomplished pleasure
     Floated midway on the waves
     Where was heard a warbling measure
     wann'be pilot draft dodge caves.
It was a miracle of cruel device,
A torture dome abu-greibs of ice!
     A djinni with a suicide bomb
     In a vision once I saw :
     It was a Babylonian maid
     And on her rocket grenade she played
     Singing of Five Year's War.
Could I revive within me
Her insurgency and song
To such a deep despair twould win me
That with moaning loud and long
I would raze that dome from air,
That tortured dome! those greibs of ice!
And all who heard should see them there,
And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
Weave a circle round him thrice,
And close your eyes with holy dread,
For he on heavy crude hath fed
And drunk the milk of hellish lies.

2006 – with apologies
to Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Kubla Khan)